Mariee Juarez, Jakelin Caal Maquin, Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez, Felipe Gómez Alonzo, Juan de León Gutiérrez, Darlyn Valle, and Wilmer Josué Ramírez Vásquez are minors who died in US Custody. Migrants are fleeing dire situations at home: gang violence, drought, starvation, poverty. Current administration policy, directed by White Nationalist, Stephen Miller, denies legal asylum to these migrant children and places them in CBP holding facilities that are concrete floors with mats and barbed wired fencing. Those with relatives in the US are denied access to them. Illegally separated from adult family members, young children are doing their best to take care of those even younger. They are denied basic sanitation as soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste. Children are hungry as they are fed inadequate diets of oatmeal, Cup o’ Noodles, burritos and cookies. Even when taken ill in these abominable conditions, there are no capable adults to care for them. The US imports avocados, pineapples, bananas, mangos from Guatemala, Mexico and other countries. Guatemala is suffering a drought where maize, the main staple diet, cannot be grown. Crops grown in the US are harvested by migrants.

“Kids in Cages: Inhumane Treatment at the Border”Testimony of Clara Long Before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, July 11, 2019A 14-year-old girl told us:

“I was in the first cell for seven days, sleeping with no mattress. It is hard to sleep when you don’t have a mattress. I then came down with the flu. I then went into the flu cell for seven days. When you are in the flu cell, you also sleep on the floor, but you have a mattress. There were 21 other kids in that space with the flu. I had a fever in there and I was shaking. Some of the other kids were vomiting. They all had fevers. No one was taking care of the kids with the flu. … We were not allowed to leave the flu cell, ever. It was very boring. I did nothing to entertain myself, nor was anything offered. It was sad, very sad. I felt locked up and closed in.”